


Their Watch of Wondering Love

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, De-Aged Castiel, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finds his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Watch of Wondering Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chef_Geekier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chef_Geekier/gifts).



> The request was for "angel babies." I only managed to work in one. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

He's finally asleep, one plump starfish hand curled up by his face and connected to his mouth by a slender string of drool that slowly thins and breaks. Dean lets out his breath slowly, softly, halfway convinced that any sound just slightly louder than the room's ambient noise will wake him and start it all over again. 

The movement of air does make a few feathery strands of hair brush across his round cheek for a moment, but to Dean's immense relief he doesn't wake. Carefully, with the expertise born of endless nights of practice, Dean backs out of the room without hitting any of the creaky boards and closes the door silently behind him.

The poor thing is teething, again, and he'll be awake in a few hours when the baby Tylenol wears off, standing up in his crib with tears welling up in his big blue eyes and screaming for “Dah! Dah!” And Dean will come back, like he always does, and hold him, rock him, sing to him, coax him into swallowing his grape-flavored medicine (dye-free, they learned _that_ lesson the hard way) and generally do everything he can think of to soothe Castiel back to sleep.

But between now and then Dean is free. It's just past two thirty in the morning, give or take, and Sam is probably still up, but Dean just needs a minute to breathe.

There had never really been a question, of course, not from the moment they saw the screaming red-faced newborn, but if there had been it would've been settled the first time Dean picked him up. The baby had blinked nearsightedly up at him, gulped back the sob that was already halfway out, and settled down into his arms like he knew belonged there. 

“Hi, Cas,” he'd whispered into the tiny curl of the baby's ear. “It's Dean. I've got you. I'm going to take care of you, okay?”

Castiel had chosen that moment to pee all over him.

It had gone on like that, more or less: a moment of breathtaking magic, followed by the long hard slog of, well, shit. And other things. Dean doesn't really remember the first couple of months, anyway – between his brother, slowly recovering from the enormous strain the trials had put on his body, and the baby, who literally would not sleep unless Dean was holding him, he hadn't had time to think, let alone lay down long-term memories. 

And then, so slowly he didn't realize it was happening until it had already happened, things got better. One day he realized that Sammy had walked across a room without wincing, and then Castiel figured out how to control his little face well enough to smile when he saw Dean, and Sam was eating more and Cas didn't spit up so much and Dean slept a whole six hours in one stretch and woke up to find that it had been months since his brother nearly died and his angel fell. 

“Do you think he remembers?” Sam asked once, as they watched the baby's shaky struggle to sit up, only to topple gently over a moment later with a familiar expression of surprise before stubbornly beginning again.

“Remembers what?” Dean said absently, grinning as Castiel listed slowly leftward until his fat little cheek hit the floor.

“I don't know, everything.” Sam leaned down off the couch and offered Cas a finger to hold so he could pull himself upright again. “Do you remember how you used to be, Cas?” he cooed.

Castiel had looked thoughtful for a moment, carefully took Sam's finger into his mouth, and bit down hard with his two very sharp little teeth. Then he fell over again.

But Dean couldn't get the question out of his mind. It's not like he knows much about little kids, anyway: his memories of Sam kick in somewhere between two and three, when his brother was already walking and talking. He has Google to answer questions he never knew he'd have, because being a hunter is one thing but “stinky cheese in baby neck folds” is still a phrase that should never enter anyone's vocabulary. But he doesn't have anyone to compare Castiel to. 

It's a normal baby thing, he thinks, to wake up crying. Babies do that, right? But he can't shake the memory of Sammy's nightmares after Jess died or his conviction that Cas is going through the same kind of thing.

“It's okay, sweetheart,” he whispered, night after night, cradling the warm weight in his arms. “It's okay. I've got you. You're here now, okay? You're just a baby. You're just a little human boy. Forget about all that stuff. Just forget it, Cas. Shh. Dean's here.”

And the baby grew. He put everything within reach into his mouth, and became particularly fascinated with the cord of Sam's laptop. He learned to eat food – “sorry, buddy,” Dean told him, “no burgers until you have more teeth” – and to hold his bottle himself. He smiled at everyone (but especially at Dean), and he babbled and laughed and started to say “Dah” and “Am.”

God, Dean misses Castiel.

It's an idiotic thing to think, because the baby _is_ Cas – fallen, human, tiny and fragile and helpless – but he isn't Dean's friend. He's got the solemn stare, intense and blue and so serious he could be looking into the depths of Dean's soul, but then he blinks and that tiny echo of a being so incomprehensibly huge – a celestial wavelength of intent – is lost in the middle of fat cheeks and a rosebud mouth and the cutest little nose...

Dean's eyes are burning, gritty with exhaustion, and he slumps against the wall and rubs at them with the back of his wrist. It's probably for the best, isn't it? He misses Castiel, but he loves the baby. (Well, he has to, really. One of them wouldn't have survived the first couple of months if he didn't.) 

He hopes Cas doesn't remember. The guilt, the pain, all the mistakes he made and the brothers and sisters he killed, the shame that had driven him to stay in Purgatory – all wiped clean, as easy as Dean can wipe his round little bottom. And if the only price is that Dean sometimes thinks about the angel he isn't any more, well, Dean's not going to be that selfish. He'd thought, once or twice, that there was something, might be something, between them, but it's too late now. That guy's gone. 

“Dah?” a little voice calls out curiously. “Dah?”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean mutters, and opens the door. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he says. “Dah's here.”

Castiel is sitting up in his crib, carefully petting the stuffed bumblebee in his lap, and he breaks into a toothy smile when Dean comes back in. “Dah!” he chirps, and holds out his arms to be picked up.

“Hey, buddy.” Dean scoops him up, pressing his face into the baby-fine hair that smells of Johnson's shampoo. “What's the matter, you couldn't stay asleep?”

“Bee,” Cas says imperiously, waving one pudgy finger in the direction of his crib. Dean sighs and shifts the baby to his hip so he can scoop up the stuffed toy. 

“Here's your bee. You think you and Bee can go back to sleep? Dean's pretty tired, Cas. Dean needs to go night-night too.”

“Nigh,” Castiel repeats contentedly, clutching Bee with one hand and taking a fistful of Dean's flannel shirt with the other. “Nigh nigh.”

“Yep.” Dean tries to detach his little fingers, but the moment he does Cas just grabs a different part of his shirt. “Night-night. That's where you and Bee need to go, okay? And Dean, too. Dean needs to have a drink and then go night-night.”

“Dada,” Cas says softly, rubbing his cheek against the soft fabric. “Dada nigh nigh.”

 _Dada_. Before it's always been Dah, and this might just be Castiel repeating syllables the way he sometimes does, but the word still makes something warm and golden bubble up inside him. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah. Dada.” 

His other arm sneaks up around the baby, almost of its own accord, and Dean holds him tight like the precious, breakable thing he is. It's better this way. It is. The old Cas would have been terrible at being human – the new Cas still is, of course, but only in the way that all babies are terrible at being human. There's time. He'll learn. And Dean will get to watch, pride swelling his heart, as he does. 

He'll be there for him this time around, he promises himself. Dean's never been much for adult relationships, friendly or otherwise, no matter the bond he seemed to have formed with his angel, but he knows _family_ inside and out. And Castiel, his little boy, this wriggling armful of limbs and milky breath and – ow – surprisingly sharp fingernails, Castiel is family now.

“I've got you, Cas,” he whispers. “Daddy's got you.”

And alone in the vast expanse of Heaven, Metatron sits back and smiles. This is fun already, but he can't wait for the teen years.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the second verse of "O Little Town of Bethlehem": _While mortals sleep, the angels keep / their watch of wondering love._


End file.
